exactly, I had one interviewer who wanted me to write a function to divide x by y without using / or %. I proposed the obvious solution with a loop, which he quickly dismissed. I then proposed to try to do something with bit masks and shifts which he dismissed as well: "I don't think we'll be able to do that in the time we have, I never saw someone do that before in the time we have, etc". He then wanted me to guess that I should use a binary search for this. The resulting code was convoluted and hard to understand and made no sense to me. He had to drag me through it. The experience had nothing to do with how I develop software and write code on a day to day basis.